EDITOR’S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion of research has found no cure through alternative medicine. Yet these treatments, mostly unproven, are now common and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is part of an occasional series examining their use and potential risks.
–––
NEW YORK (AP) — Suzanne Somers is at it again.
Less than a year after the former sitcom actress frustrated mainstream doctors (and encouraged some fans) by touting bioidentical hormones on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she’s back with a new book. This one concerns an even more emotional subject: cancer treatment. More specifically, she opposes what she considers to be a massive and often unnecessary use of chemotherapy.
Somers, who herself rejected chemotherapy, seems to be enjoying the fight.
“Cancer is an epidemic,” the 63-year-old actress said in an interview at a Manhattan hotel, a day before Tuesday’s release of “Knockout,” her 19th book. “And yet we keep coming back to the same old pot, because that’s all we have. Well, it’s a book about options.
“I’m ‘we,’” Somers adds. “I’m not them. I was on the other side of the bed. And it’s powerful to have information.
The American Cancer Society is concerned.
“I’m very afraid that people will listen to her message and follow what she says and be harmed by it,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, the organization’s chief medical officer. “We use current treatments because they have been proven to prolong life. They followed a logical and scientific evaluation method. I don’t know if Suzanne Somers knows that there is a logical and scientific method.
More broadly, Brawley is concerned that in the United States, celebrities or sports stars feel they can use their fame to provide medical advice. “There is a tendency to oversimplify medical messages,” he says. “Well, oversimplification can kill.”
Although she may be one of the most visible celebrities, Somers isn’t the only celebrity to recently advocate for alternative treatments.
Radio host Don Imus says he eats habanero peppers and takes Japanese soy supplements to help treat his prostate cancer. The late Farrah Fawcett underwent a mix of traditional and alternative treatments and made a poignant plea for alternative methods in her film “Farrah’s Story.” Actress Jenny McCarthy advocates special diet, supplements, metal detoxification and delayed vaccines to treat autism.
The problem goes beyond alternative medicine. Tennis great John McEnroe advocates widespread screening for prostate cancer, which Brawley and others say is not necessarily wise.
And comedian Bill Maher has made no secret of his disdain for the flu vaccine, questioning why you would let someone “put a disease in your arm.” He also said pregnant women should not receive the new swine flu vaccine, contradicting U.S. health officials who say pregnant women especially need it because they are at high risk of flu complications.
Although it’s hard to imagine a comedian like Maher influencing public health decisions, there have been cases where celebrities have influenced the public, says Barron Lerner, a doctor who has studied celebrity illnesses across the world. ‘history.
He remembers how some desperately ill cancer patients took inspiration from Steve McQueen, the rugged actor who turned to an unorthodox cancer treatment in 1980. When conventional medicine failed failed to stem his mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining, McQueen traveled to Mexico, where he was treated with everything from coffee enemas to laetrile, the now-debunked remedy made from apricot kernels.
“It’s difficult to quantify his influence, but there was a lot of trafficking to Mexico of terminal cancer patients after his death,” says Lerner, author of “When Illness Goes Public.”
Even though his alternative treatments didn’t work, the actor, who embodied a sense of rebellion and individualism, expressed an emerging feeling that traditional medicine might not be enough, Lerner says.
Fast forward to the 21st century, where Somers, who played the scatterbrained blonde in the TV series “Three’s Company,” wrote a series of books making this point. In “Ageless,” she argued that doctors don’t understand women’s bodies, especially those going through menopause.
Thanks to so-called “bioidentical” hormones – compounds custom-mixed by specialty pharmacies – Somers argued that women can regain youth and vitality, energy and vigor, not to mention their libido.
The problem for many doctors: These custom-compounded products are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Somers, whose hormonal regimen includes creams, injections and about 60 daily supplements, received a huge boost earlier this year from Oprah Winfrey. “A lot of people consider Suzanne a charlatan,” Winfrey said when Somers appeared on her show. “But she might just be a pioneer.”
Yet Winfrey’s tacit support for Somers earned her some of the worst criticism of her career. “Crazy Talk,” Newsweek headlined an article about the talk show host earlier this year. Another headline, on Salon.com: “Oprah’s Bad Medicine.”
Winfrey responded in a statement that her viewers knew that “the medical information presented on the show is just that – information – and not an endorsement or prescription.” But many doctors believe Winfrey has more responsibility to her viewers.
“Oprah, how could you? That’s all I can say,” says Dr. Nanette Santoro, a hormone specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Somers is now hoping to receive another invitation to the hugely influential Winfrey stage to discuss her cancer book. Her theories about chemotherapy, however, have garnered some attention she could have done without: the actress had to apologize recently when her offhand comment that chemotherapy probably killed actor Patrick Swayze, rather than his cancer of the pancreas, made headlines.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Somers says now. “I apologized to his family. But she adds: “We all know that chemotherapy does nothing against pancreatic cancer. »
In fact, Somers considers chemotherapy effective for some cancers, but not for the most common ones, including lung and breast cancer. Diagnosed with breast cancer a decade ago, she underwent a lumpectomy and radiation, but refused chemotherapy, as she did more recently when she was briefly misdiagnosed with invasive cancer.
One criticism that is sure to come up in Somers’ book on cancer is his reliance on several doctors with controversial backgrounds, including Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski of Houston, who designed his own alternative cancer treatments and led lengthy legal battles with the FDA.
But Somers defends him passionately, as she does for the other doctors interviewed in her book. As for herself, she says, she’s comfortable in her role as celebrity health guru.
“Celebrities are easy to target,” says Somers. “But I don’t have an agenda. I’m just a passionate layman. And I use my fame to do something good for people.
